The Brief

There is a stigma attached to Alzheimer’s & dementia that as soon as a diagnosis has been made the person no longer has the ability to make decisions or care for themselves. Our research showed us that people living with Alzheimer’s and Dementia (and their families) do not want pity – they want compassion & empathy. We wanted to create a new conversation and tell the stories of those brave people living with Alzheimer’s.

Our objective was to break down this stigma to encourage people living with Alzheimer’s to tell their stories. Using a targeted mix of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Website content allowed us to enable a two-way engagement and interactivity with the public previously not available.

The Work

Our creative strategy for the campaign was to show the different sides of Alzheimer’s and the people that it effects. The campaign features two short videos filmed by award winning Irish director Ken Wardrop which show the realities of living with Alzheimer’s. We also ran radio ads and rather than fully scripting the radio ads we let Denise and Seamus talk us through their experiences of living with Alzheimer’s in their own words. We used a mix of online and print media to let people know about the launch. We used Facebook and Twitter to seed the videos and portraits which aimed to inspire others to share their stories using #livingwithdementia and by posting on the website.

The campaign over delivered in all areas with extremely strong results. The feedback from the thousands of people who are living with Alzheimer’s and dementia has been overwhelmingly positive. During the campaign period website sessions increased by 131% and page views by 80% on the time period 2 weeks previous. During the campaign period helpline calls increased by 70%.